2027: APC flouting electoral laws with endorsements for Tinubu -ADC
By Ndukaku Ihe
The African Democratic Congress (ADC) has accused the All Progressives Congress (APC) of allegedly breaching the electoral laws with endorsement for President Bola Tinubu, ahead of the 2027 general elections.
The ADC, in a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Abdullahi Bolaji, Wednesday, said the APC is hoisting endorsement billboards, rather than addressing urgent national challenges.
It stated that soaring inflation, collapse of the Naira, high fuel price,and escalating cases of kidnapping, in the country, are all evidence that the federal government is distracted from governance.
Consequently, the opposition party charged the APC to dismantle “its unlawful campaign machinery,” and concentrate its energy on addressing the many challenges confronting Nigerians.
“For several months, APC organs have staged rallies and erected billboards endorsing President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for a second term. From the Abuja national caucus that proclaimed him ‘sole candidate,’ to choreographed declarations in Port Harcourt, Minna, Kano, and Akure.
“These theatrics brazenly ignore the Electoral Act and the fresh warning issued by the Independent National Electoral Commission, which reminds every politician that public campaigning is illegal until one hundred and fifty days before polling day.
“While the ruling party chants ‘four more years’ and sings songs of a sinking mandate, prices have galloped beyond the reach of ordinary citizens. Headline inflation, already twenty-two percent in 2023, rocketed to a thirty-year high of almost thirty-five percent last December and still hovers above twenty-two percent today, meaning food, transport, and rent now cost roughly sixty percent more than they did at the time he took office”, the ADC stated.
Furthermore, the party noted that “the naira has crumbled from about N461 to the dollar in early 2023 to well over N1,500, wiping out savings and strangling small enterprises. Petrol that once sold for N185 per litre before subsidy removal now averages more than N1,000, turning every journey to work or market into an exercise in anguish.
“Debt is devouring the treasury. The World Bank projects that servicing our obligations already swallows more than our total federal revenue, leaving scarcely a kobo for schools, clinics, or roads. Revenue mobilisation limps along at barely eleven percent of our Gross Domestic Product, far below the continental average, yet the government borrows again and again and again.
“When it comes to insecurity, in communities across the nation, security has deteriorated into a national nightmare. Between April and June this year, 122 security personnel consisting of NSCDC, Police and Soldiers have been killed; 1865 civilians have been killed, and over 3132 security-related killings have been reported across the nation.
“Only last Friday, more than 50 people were seized in a major case of mass abduction in Sabon Gari Dirmi, north of Zamfara State. Nigerians are being abducted at an industrial scale while President Tinubu chases after adoption for second term. Instead of security personnel, our streets are lined with the President’s campaign billboards
In the power sector, the national grid collapsed a dozen times last year and several times this year, exposing the hollowness of President Tinubu and the APC’s promises of reliable power.
“Corruption indices still rank Nigeria in the bottom quarter of the world and press-freedom scores have fallen ten places in a single year, as independent journalists face mounting pressure.
Under the APC, Nigerians are hungry, sick and scared, but instead of finding real solutions to these problems as they promised to do, the government has been busy building an army of digital propagandists and illusion creators.”
